


A Mindless Man

by tasteofhysteria (orphan_account)



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Prohibition Era, If you see a rare character on there IT'S PROBABLY AN OC, Multi, Mutant Powers, OCs everywhere, Superpowers, Xmentalia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-06-13
Packaged: 2018-01-16 13:39:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1349395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/tasteofhysteria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Human/superpowers AU. He’s one of the greatest assets his government has; unfortunately, he manages to destroy their best and his leash and collar turn into a muzzle and choke-hold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Matryona

**_ Moscow, Russia _ **

_9 March 1915_

* * *

 

”I don’t have to tell you, of course, that this is very important.”

"I understand, sir."

"Do you, Braginskiy? Because this is General Selivanov who demanded your  _expertise_.”

Ivan eyed his commanding officer in his peripheral, smiling inoffensively as the older man grimaced in distaste. Captain Onisim Novikov was a superstitious man of the particularly pernicious variety, beyond even what was normal for their most rural and uneducated of comrades. Talk of the inexplicable and perceivedly unnatural made Novikov vastly uncomfortable; being put into direct contact with it made him break into hives.

"Sir," he repeated with slight reproach. Novikov grunted dismissively, shoving a single, thick file folder into Ivan’s grasp, carefully avoiding the younger man’s gloved hands. 

They were slowly making their way down a long hallway comprised of thick cinder block walls and gleaming linoleum floors, passing heavy metal doors every few yards and winding around the empty gurneys and wheelchairs left pushed up against the walls and trailed by two silent soldiers in pristine uniforms.

"You’re arrogant," Novikov said, pointedly not meeting Ivan’s gaze and choosing instead to look down and adjust his lapel pin. "I’ve seen better men than you go up against the Matryona and come out broken. I suggest you fix that attitude. I have no use for broken things, Braginskiy."

"Sir." 

Novikov rapped his knuckles against a door lintel as they passed: an answering shriek rang out before it was cut short. Neither man spared the door a passing glance. 

"Is General Selivanov already in Przemyśl?" Ivan asked, dodging around a harried-looking nurse bearing a tray laden with various surgical tools. 

"Starving the bastards out. Started up another frontal assault in mid-December, I think. Though I don’t know why you’re asking me since you already know," Novikov spat.

Ivan had the nerve to look innocent. “Of course I would afford my CO every privacy, sir. I wouldn’t wish to impose—”

"Your entire  _existence_  is an imposition, the whole lot of you,” Novikov growled, lengthening his stride to pull ahead. Ivan trailed him, his longer legs having no trouble keeping up with the shorter man.

"If I may—" Ivan began.

"You may not, because you’re not the only one around here with some intuition, obnoxious as you are about it. I can’t wait until this is all over and I can accept my promotion back into Petrograd and leave all you monsters behind like a bad dream."

Behind Novikov’s back, Ivan was grinning fiercely. It was likely to his own detriment, but he enjoyed the other man’s refreshing honesty if not the man himself; his words always echoed whatever his thoughts sang out, sharp though they might’ve been. With an exaggerated pause, Captain Novikov came to a halt in front of a door, nearly indistinguishable from the rest save for the higher sheen on its handle, suggesting it was unused to being opened.

"The Matryona," he said melodramatically. Ivan politely said nothing, slipping the file beneath his arm and shifting his stance into a patient parade rest as Novikov shot him an annoyed look for ignoring what he deemed the necessary dramatics for such a moment. Ivan echoed "The Matryona" back at him and Novikov seemed appeased.

"Remember," Novikov said, "this is for General Selivanov especially, but we want everything you can wring out of her. We,” he continued, lazily motioning to the soldiers that had come to a halt behind Ivan, “will be monitoring you both to make sure you don’t get up to anything.”

"Sir—"

"Braginskiy, we may keep dogs but that doesn’t mean we trust them not to bite us at the first opportunity," Novikov said coldly. "No matter how good their collars are."

Ivan’s eyes narrowed but he wisely said nothing. A muscle worked in his jaw and his hands were clenched so tightly behind his back that the seams of his gloves creaked perilously. Novikov looked at him for one long moment before turning his gaze back to the metal door, satisfied. He knocked briskly just once, taking a single step back as the door creaked open a few scant centimetres. A tired-looking woman appeared in the space between the door and the jamb, dark bruises from many sleepless night under her eyes. Her hair was a mess of unwashed blonde curls lightly streaked with gray, piled high atop her head in what had probably been a very fetching style several days ago.

"Nadya," Novikov greeted her gallantly, taking her hand in his and lifting it to kiss her knuckles. She smiled tightly in response and pushed the door open a bit wider, gaze straying to Ivan. 

"Is this the one?" she asked. Ivan blinked; her voice was much lower and huskier than he’d expected.

"It is. Braginskiy, this is Doctor Nadezhda Bezrukova, the Matryona’s handler." There was an odd, proprietary gleam in Novikov’s eye as he presented the doctor to Ivan’s restricted acquaintanceship, but the warning was clear in the look he gave Ivan over Bezrukova’s head. Ivan said nothing, offering the doctor a polite nod. 

She frowned slightly, thoughtfully, taking him in from head to toe as though he were a very interesting lab specimen (though to those in her line of work, it would not be an inept comparison). “You are quite young. Tell me your age.”

"I—"

"He is twenty four, Nadya. Not so very young."

"He’s a child," she demurred, slipping her hand from Novikov’s grasp and turning back to disappear through the door. Novikov watched her go with a discontented expression before lifting his chin sharply at Ivan to indicate that the younger man should proceed him into the chamber.

The room itself was unremarkable, square and made of the same gray cinder block walls and linoleum tile, though one wall had mirrored panel. It was bare of any personal effects or furniture except for a single wooden chair.

It was occupied by a girl, her face obscured by a wild mass of stringy black ringlets. Her skin was the odd color of someone with a darker complexion gone pale for lack of sunlight. Her wrists and ankles were bound to the chair’s arms and legs with thick leather restraints. She was so still that Ivan might’ve believed her to be a very unsettling doll; at that moment, she inhaled sharply and her head rolled back to rest on the chair’s rear slats, her eyes open and unblinking and pure white. 

She was young, he noted. Not much older than Yayushka would be—

(That thought he shied away from immediately.)

"Our newest acquisition from Serbia," Novikov proclaimed proudly. Bezrukova rolled her eyes as she collected her clipboard and bent to examine the restraints around the girl’s limbs. "A Romani from Vardar Macedonia—"

"You may brag to your subordinates later," Doctor Bezrukova cut in, straightening as she finished her inspection, "about the successes of your hunting trips. There is still work to do and little time to do it in. She is a far-seer,” she continued, looking to Ivan. “Though you already knew that,” she added wryly, noting his lack of surprise. He inclined his head in acknowledgement. 

"And so she can see the future."

"With complete accuracy. Insofar as we can tell," Novikov interrupted, unwilling to be left out.

"She only speaks her prophecies in Bugurdži," Bezrukova answered to Ivan’s questioning look, "when she speaks at all. All she can do is see. So if we do not have someone of your particular…talents to interpret, all her words are useless."

"There are others—"

"She broke the rest of them, the little Matryona," Novikov said. "We have a difficult task recordkeeping with her when she keeps destroying the pens."

"She… _broke_ them?” Ivan asked.

"Killed them," Bezrukova clarified. 

"Brutally," Novikov added gleefully.

"Ah," Ivan said.

"We will be observing you from there," Bezrukova nodded at the mirror. It quickly became obvious that it was not a mirror but a panel of one-way glass. "In case something happens."

"I understand."

And he did, though the thought brought him no comfort. Instead, he cursed Emil Bloch.

 

* * *

 

Not much later, he stood alone in the room, save for the Romani girl, knowing that two soldiers waited outside the closed door in case of an emergency and that the doctor and his commanding officer were watching through a window from the next room over. Inhaling deeply, he unbuttoned his shinel coat and folded it neatly, setting it aside on the floor. 

The girl hadn’t moved at all. Ivan could hear her, vaguely, nothing coherent: it was like listening to a rapidly flowing brook made of radio static.

Sighing, he tugged off his slightly-too-small gloves and stuffed them into his back pocket, flexing his hands to return sensation to them. He turned to the girl, whose head had started rolling back and forth across the wooden slat, her lips moving quickly but with no sound issuing forth.

"You will have to speak a civilized tongue, I’m afraid," he told her, rolling the sleeves of his gimnasterka up to his elbows. "Do you have a name, girl?"

The only response was a short, breathy keening.

"Ka…kako se zovete?” he tried in Serbian. His was intensely limited; he knew only a few phrases from his recent travels.

The Romani girl went very still for a long moment.

Ivan took a step towards her, crouching in front of her. She was a very small girl for her age, he thought. ”Kako se zovete?” he asked again, reaching out to touch her face.

“ _Vanya._ ”

The girl was staring at him with her sightless eyes, speaking with the voice of his long-departed mother. Ivan stared back in mute horror, fingers frozen a hair’s breadth away from her cheek.

“ _Vanya_ ,” the girl said again, and it was the exasperated tone his mother had used when she had been too tired to answer another of his hundreds of childishly curious questions.

"Yes," he whispered. "Yes, that’s me."

The Romani lifted her chin imperiously like a queen and turned her face into his hand. 

He awoke, disoriented and screaming, being dragged down the hallway by the two soldiers from before by his arms, his whole body shrieking as though every nerve was aflame and his mind eaten by hellfire. 

Bezrukova and Novikov were charging down the hallway after him, arguing in loud voices and violent gestures that he couldn’t even begin to understand.

The soldiers dragged him through a set of double doors and past a gaggle of nurses who pressed themselves up against the walls in shock. There was a sharp left turn down a far narrower hallway where his screams echoed further before they pulled him through the doorway of a small room, lifting him onto a gurney shoved against the wall and lashing his rebellious limbs down with the same leather restraints as before.

The door burst open again but only Doctor Bezrukova shoved her way through, giving the terse order to hold him down as she prepared the syringe. 

When Ivan awoke again, it was to a dull gray ceiling and with no sense of how much time he’d lost.

"What happened?" he croaked. Doctor Bezrukova appeared, bending over him and shining a penlight into his eyes. 

"Nothing that I expected," she replied. She didn’t simply look tired now; she looked exhausted, beyond the point of what mere rest could fix. "Nothing that any of us expected. How do you feel?"

"What day is it?" he asked instead.

"It’s…still the ninth of March," she answered hesitantly. "What do you remember?"

"March tenth, British and Indian troops in the Artois region of northern France attack the Germans around the village of Neuve Chapelle. The Germans are going to be outnumbered and taken by surprise," Ivan said in a monotone. "The British will achieve their initial objective but fail to capitalize on the narrow breach they create in the German lines. After three days of fighting, with over 11,000 casualties, the British offensive will be suspended. The Germans will suffer over 10,000 casualties." 

Bezrukova stared at him mutely before turning away and leaving the room. 

 

* * *

 

"He  _killed_  her, Nadya! It’s all completely  _ruined_! What the hell will we say to the commanders now?!”

"Shut up and listen to me, you fool," Bezrukova hissed, shaking off Novikov’s grasp on her wrists. "He remembers all of it."

"All of—" Novikov faltered. "All of it? You’re sure?"

"Not all of it," she replied grimly, "but enough to put the higher-ups at ease until you can hunt up another clairvoyant."

Novikov groaned, turning away and massaging the bridge of his nose.

"Ruined," he lamented, "the whole thing ruined—"

"But it’s not ruined!" she broke in. "Don’t you see what this means?"

"I see that it means that Braginskiy has destroyed our best tool," he responded sourly. He brightened immediately. "Though I suppose that means I have a good excuse to get rid of him now—"

"Stop being such an idiot," Bezrukova snapped. " _Think_! The Matryona was our most powerful mutant and he completely overwhelmed her.”

"I thought it was the other way around," Novikov muttered, turning to a table laden with glasses and beverages. He poured a generous measure of vodka into a tumbler for each of them, proffering a glass to Bezrukova. She grabbed it and took a reluctant sip. 

"Apparently not," she replied dryly, "since she’s the one we’re putting on ice. There was some recoil, obviously, but he’s completely sound. And I think, perhaps, a bit better than before."

"Of course," Novikov said, looking at her curiously. "You said he remembers everything. That’s useful enough."

"Think of the long term, Onisim. He’s no clairvoyant now, but he was…lifting things."

Novikov continued staring, mystified.

"In his sleep," she clarified.

"…large things?" he asked.

"Everything in that room," she confirmed. Novikov set down his glass with a loud thud. 

"My God," he murmured. "I’m never going to get out of here now."

"There was another thing," she said.

"We may as well have the whole of it now, since I’m going to live and die in Moscow," Novikov said absently, pulling on the edges of his moustache.

"He answered a question I asked."

"Oh yes," he replied derisively, "the epitome of human achievement."

"He did it without touching me. And I hadn’t…said anything aloud."

Novikov went very still, dragging his eyes up from the floor to gaze at Bezrukova with hard, flinty eyes. She steeled herself, looking back up at him fearlessly.

"You’re certain?" he demanded in an undertone. "Completely certain?"

"He told me about an ambush in France happening tomorrow. The British against the Germans, a surprise attack."

“And?”

"And it won’t come to much, but we’ll know in less than a week if he was right."

Novikov sighed and picked up his glass again, examining the clear liquid with an expression of distaste. He curled his lip and tossed the alcohol back in one large gulp, pounding his free hand against his chest at the searing burn.

 

* * *

 

"Twenty-nine years isn’t very long, is it?"

Nadezhda Bezrukova glanced up from her note-taking to peer at Ivan curiously. He was released from his restraints at last, a full four days later. He was sitting up, one shoulder pressed against the wall, right hand wrapped around his left wrist in his lap and flexing his left hand absently. He looked too young, with that lost expression on his face. At the same time, he was an intimidating physical presence, seeming too big to be allowed.

"It’s not so very long," she ventured hesitantly. "But not all that short either. Did you see—remember something else?"

"Just something she told me," he murmured quietly. "It has nothing to do with the mission. It’s just private personal business."

"We’ve been very lenient on you, Braginskiy," she chided him. "You know none of this can be kept secret from us, for the sake of the mission. Besides, you don’t have any private personal business."

"Every person does—"

"Yes, every  _person_. You don’t fit that criteria. None of you do. I don’t know why I have to keep reminding you.”

"I don’t know either," he replied quietly.


	2. A Mouthful of Diamonds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here's the introduction (backstory?) of our first original ~~kid~~ character. To clarify, since Romanian history gets confusing around this point (not that Eastern European history is ever NOT confusing), this character is not Romania.
> 
> ...it's Moldova. (To clarify even further, it's _my_ Moldova, so that you won't be confused trying to imagine Himaruya's strange little pigtailed version running around messing everything up. They're entirely separate.)
> 
> Any further questions you can message me with!

_**Albiniţa, Basarabia (Kingdom of Romania)** _

_3 April 1921_

Ion had come to America because five sons were a boon but six became a burden when the sixth was…wrong. The community was too small, too close-knit, too claustrophobic to not notice when someone among them was more than what they seemed. And the community was far too religious and superstitious to not make an example of the newly-derelict pariah.

It became obvious to the Sollomovici family (less of a family and more of a  _clan_ for their numbers) that Ion, gifted and cursed as he was, could not stay safely in Anenii Noi. But there was no money to be made in Chișinău or even in București, not so soon after the last war, not even with his useful  _talents_.

His mother Adalet pulled him aside one night before the evening meal, leading him by the hand as though he were still a child into the sheep-run, where the ewes were dozing after a long day of very strenuous grazing. He was told of an elderly Turkish aunt (or some sort of female relation) who lived on the coast in Constanța and would, provided he could present himself to her in a timely manner, get him on the last ship departing to Turkey before winter set in. A train would take him into Greece and onto another boat going to the southern coast of Italy.

“And from there,” his mother told him, “America.”

It was a strange concept to swallow: America was a place of legends and fairytales, like Camelot or Plato’s Atlantis. It was not a real, tangible place that one could go to, regardless of the newspapers reeling off long stories about the newest happenings in American cities. But that was all they were: just stories.

But maybe the yarn had been woven so well that his whole family believed in it, that they would tearfully ship him off the following week in old man Wadim’s vegetable cart towards Galați, wrapped in sheepskins with embroidered vests, cămase, and tooled leather chimiri that he could sell along the way and with all the money they could spare to gift him with. He embraced his elder brother Andrei and Andrei’s wife Nira, his other brothers Vali, Aurel, and the twins Mikhail and Radu. His father Ovidiu clapped him on the shoulder with a slightly lost expression, as though he hadn’t quite wrapped his mind around the idea that he was sending his fourteen year old son out into the world on his own. His mother could not be prevailed upon to appear at all, but they could all hear her muffled wailing inside the house though they pretended not to.

Worst of all was saying goodbye to his sister Miruna, his twin, pale-faced and shaking (though not crying, because she was too strong for that). She clung onto his arm as his father and brothers loaded his meager bag into the cart and conferred in quiet voices with Wadim, held his hand as he climbed into the small wagon, and clutched at his fingers and ran alongside the cart until they had picked up too much speed and were too far down the lane for her to continue safely in the dark.

(And Ion thought, maybe, Miruna would’ve run alongside the cart all the way to Galați and Constanța, Italy, and then America with him if she could have.)

* * *

 

The road to Galați was long, bumpy, and hard going. It rained often, turning the hard-packed dirt roads into a knee-deep mud; either Ion and Wadim would often have to put their shoulders against the rear of the cart and push against it as the other jerked and tugged on the mule’s bridle, blaspheming and singing praises in equal measure when the cart finally squelched free onto firmer ground.

Wadim was a sober, stoic man who doled out his words in scanty monosyllables, choosing silence when an economical gesture or quick blow could serve just as well. He was quick to bank the fire when the sun went down, quick to lay out his bedroll, and quick to close his eyes and slip off into sleep, his snores the only loud thing about him. One particularly cold night where the two (three) of them were forced to sleep beside the road for lack of inns, it occurred to Ion that he would likely not see his family again. And so, under the cover of Wadim’s heavy snores, Ion pulled his blanket over his head and refused to cry, though any normal fourteen year old would.

(And to his chagrin, he was far too much of a normal fourteen year old.)

Not many days after his revelation, they arrived in Galați and Ion was swiftly set aboard a train in steerage. It was his first time aboard a train—

“—though not your last,” Wadim said with grim humor, the most words he’d strung together in over a fortnight. He crossed himself and placed his hand atop Ion’s head. “Go with God,” he said solemnly.

Ion’s last view of Wadim was through the fogged, scratched glass of the train window. The old man lifted his hand briefly in farewell before turning away, each of his steps punctuated by the shrill whistle of the departing train. Watching the last of his old life speed away as fast as a rheumatic old man could, Ion did not cry.

* * *

 

_23 December 1923_

Later, Ion wryly noted that organizing the latest shipment of wines from Romania had a terrible tendency to make him reminisce. In retrospect, he mused, the reality hadn’t been so bad as what he’d imagined. New York City was filthy in every meaning of the word, but poetry hid in its corners, waiting to be dusted off and relacquered. He did not see his family again, but he did receive a near constant flow of letters and photographs (courtesy of Nira, now a mother of two girls and the proud owner of some monstrously expensive camera). He placed all his letters in a collection of empty cigar boxes beneath his bed and pinned all the photographs to the walls of his loft, located above the “café” he worked in.

Sighing breezily and wiping his wrist against his forehead, he toed the last wooden crate of vin into place and then started to tally up the newest arrival of “Canadian whisky” from New Orleans.

He glanced around surreptitiously before sliding his hand through the crate and into a single bottle of whiskey, retracting it a moment later to lick his fingertip thoughtfully. Instantly he recoiled and spat off to the side.

“Formaldehyde,” he muttered darkly, kicking at the crate. “Goddamn bayou rats.”

He shot the crate one last dirty look before giving out a yell.

 “Ei frate,” he called up the stairs, “we’ve got some corpse juice down here.”


	3. Courte priére pénètre les cieux.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another character introduction, but this time of a very plot-centric one! And _Étienne_ is just France. Don't be too alarmed.

_23 December 1923_

”I admit to being a very bad Catholic. There, is that satisfactory?”

"Take this seriously," the old priest said wearily. “This is your eternal soul we’re speaking of."

"Ah yes, of course. Pardon me. Ahem. Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. It has been eleven years since my last Confession."

Here Étienne went quiet and the silence dragged on for many minutes.

"This is the part," the priest said mildly from behind the grate, “where you confess your sins and receive your penance to ask for forgiveness. In case you had forgotten, my son."

"I hadn’t forgotten. I was simply unaware that the mercy of the church extended to the devil himself."

The priest laughed awkwardly, the sound of his robes rustling from the next booth over painting the clear picture of a man made uncomfortable. “An exaggeration,” he replied with feigned warmth. “There is no sin which Our Father would not forgive of the truly contrite.”

Étienne smiled within the dim, anonymous confines of his own confessional, absentmindedly twisting the ring around his right index finger. 

"I see."

The metal glinted in half-light. A shame. Father Cochran seemed like such a good man.

"Then forgive me Father, for I have sinned. It has been eleven years since my last Confession. These are my sins."

From there, he laid bare eleven years worth of sin in the same tone of voice as one would use when discussing the weather.

"—responsible for the deaths of two hundred…oh, perhaps two hundred and twenty men. Indirectly of course, I don’t really like having my hands dirtied by such menial work. Ah, but there was the one time I did do it myself, back in 1919. A young new constable, very precocious. I was quite upset with him, you know. His sense of justice was a bit too strong and he had this nasty habit of always mucking up my plans. I rather liked him though. Strong chin, honest eyes. A shame he had to go. I don’t think they ever found him—Father Cochran, are you all right?"

"Officer Dunhill?" the priest asked thinly.

"Why yes," Étienne said in delight. "So you are acquainted."

"He—I—he was part of my parish ever since he was a wee boy. His grandparents and I came over from Kilkenny together during the Famine. We all—we all wondered—his mam died of a broken heart, she did—"

Étienne quietly pondered the wooden interior of the confessional as the priest wept.

"How very small the world continually proves to be," he mused as the weeping turned into loud retching.

"You can’t—I’ll have to call the police—" Father Cochran said shakily, his voice liquid and unsteady. Étienne frowned and examined his watch, holding it up to his ear and tsking when it was silent. A jaunt down to the Central Park precinct was likely in short order; he’d have to remember to get an appropriate bribe in the way of foodstuffs. 

"A lovely neighborhood you have here," Étienne said. "A pity our time together grows short; I would’ve liked a more comprehensive tour when you were unoccupied."

The only reply was the continuation of Father Cochran’s retching. Étienne wrinkled his nose in distaste.

"So then," he continued, "may I have my act of penance? …no? I suppose the church’s mercy really doesn’t extend that far. Thank you for your time, Father Cochran." He stood carefully, mindful of the booth’s low ceiling, and brushed the wrinkles from his clothing and donned his hat. He pushed the confessional’s curtain aside and strode towards the church’s entrance, his footsteps on the marble floor echoing loudly in the empty hall, underscored by the priest’s laments. 

He blinked at the sudden burst of sunlight as he pushed his way through the doors. A short, smartly-dressed woman with impeccably polished spectacles and light brown hair plaited into a heavy braid thrown artfully over her shoulder appeared at his side immediately, pen in one hand and daily planner in the other.

"Did it go well with the Father?" she asked.

"Ah, Cécile." ‘Cécile’ was not her name. Her name seemed to change on a near-daily basis, depending on her employer’s whim; she was, however, well-paid to be whomever he wished her to be. Today it was Cécile. "It went as well as I could’ve expected, I suppose."

"He’s agreed to sell the property?"

He smiled down at her in amusement. “In so many words. Not that he needed to agree, since I know my brilliant little assistant has already acquired all the deeds for me.”

He caught the eye of one of the unobtrusively-dressed men loitering about and tilted his head meaningfully towards the church; the other man immediately straightened and prowled forward, taking the steps two at a time. Cécile pursed her lips as he passed the two of them and disappeared into the church.

"Something wrong, dear heart?"

"It’s nothing," she replied, playing with the end of her braid. He looked at her knowingly.

"Was that the one from the last company party that got drunk and accosted you?"

Cécile beamed up at him beatifically and said nothing. 

"When is the earliest we could have a construction company sent in?"

"Tuesday at the earliest," she said immediately, flipping open the planner with an efficient flick of wrist and showing him the date circled in bright red.

"Too long," he sighed. "When is the soonest we could have Xangô come in—"

"I’ve already contacted him."

"You have!" Étienne was delighted. "When is he coming?"

"As soon as dark falls," Cécile said, inclining her head towards the rapidly-sinking sun.

“Cécile, what would I do without you?” he asked admiringly. She smiled but did not meet his eyes, noting something down in her planner. She had been his assistant for nearly three years now and he loved her, possibly, in that proprietary way that men love what they are certain belongs to them. She did not ask for more and he did not expect her to; in this, they had an understanding.

With a quiet hum of pleasure, he turned to the man standing quietly behind him, taking the proffered crowbar from his hands and weighing it thoughtfully before sliding it between the handles of the church’s double doors. Quietly, subtly, men broke away from the mundane crowds of pedestrians and fanned out to surround the church, securing all the exits before disappearing back into the mass of people.

Later that night, Étienne calmly listened to the wireless, shaking his head mournfully at the report of a fire that had raged out of control in a nearby church, with two confirmed casualties and several injuries.

"How many does that make now?" he asked Cécile. She looked up from her work where she was perched on the window seat, her hair unbraided and tumbling down her back in pretty waves. “Two hundred and twenty-two?”

"Two hundred and seventeen," she corrected him. He frowned.

"I lied to a priest."

“The Lord has freed you from your sins,” she said softly, looking back down at her planner. “Go in peace.”

"Amen," he replied, lifting his wineglass as a toast.


End file.
